


Troy

by seijuro



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Animal Death, Character Study, Drabble, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, please pay attention to the warnings!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 08:36:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3243206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seijuro/pseuds/seijuro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her father taught her a lot of things, and her father taught her well. Part of being a warrior was knowing <em>how</em> to hit; the rest was knowing <em>where</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Troy

**Author's Note:**

> _triggers:_ (possible) parental abuse/manipulation, animal death/cruelty.  
>  annie leonhardt character study. dark? i had a sense of direction but i kind of lost it. sorry. admittedly its wordier than my normal style but...
> 
> tumblr: akise  
> writing blog: kujouhinako  
> twitter: arainaizevran

Her father taught her a lot of things, and her father taught her well. Part of being a warrior was knowing _how_ to hit; the rest was knowing _where_. When it came down to it, Annie supposed knowing how to hit people where it hurt was one talent that ran in the family. Fighting dirty was the other.

(“Your kicks are weak,” her father said. “Not enough.”

She had kicked hard enough at the bag to rub her skin raw, and winter left her throat and skin burning. Her dad liked saying things when he knew she would not answer with words.

She could only liken it to something ugly; Annie found a mouse in the basement once, only to promptly cover it with a glass cup where it would suffocate. There were no traps, because buying traps meant going into the city, and she could absolutely never do that. Ever. Her father shook her shoulders to the point where she could feel her insides shaking with them and told her, in plain talk, that the city was bad, that the city would kill her.

It was a child’s morbid curiosity that had her climbing back down to the basement every day. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to see the mouse escape, or if she wanted to see it try. It liked running in circles, and one time, it smashed its face against the glass where she could see the nose twitching. Annie wondered how long it spent running the walls and itself out. She never stayed long enough to find out. On the fourth day, the mouse’s fur had already strung itself tight around its body, leaving bulging ribs and bulging eyes. The nose looked dusty. Cautiously, Annie lifted the glass. The mouse did not move, but its heart jumped around so quickly the small chest rose and fell like angry waves with every breath. Grabbing a stick that lay in the far corner, she crept towards it and _prodded_. It rolled over with no resistance, body stiff, but it was still blinking. Still breathing. Annie almost wished it was a corpse, but it was _thrilling_ , just a little; she could poke at the mouse all she liked and it would not have energy to even bare its teeth.

 _It ran in the family._ Her father liked prodding at dead animals, too, but Annie was not a dead animal, and she would not hesitate to bite.

Another kick; skin broke before bone, but Annie learned—Annie was taught—to focus on the kick and not the leg.

“Your kicks aren’t weak. You are.”

She wasn’t sure how it happened. One moment, she was thinking so much it felt like her head swelled. The next moment, she thought nothing at all. There was a weird lapse—like, Annie thought, the line she walked between nothing and everything, a place where she could not tell if she was blinded or seeing black. The last moment, the third, sinuous moment, and her father was on the ground with the bag far beyond his hands. He struggled to sit up, coughing, though Annie wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or a foot to the stomach.

“Good,” he said between coughs, “better. Don’t think. Do.”

It was _do, do, do_ or _die, die, die,_ and anything in between would kill her.

The first time blade bit through skin and she found herself caged in borrowed bone, she looked down and saw her father. He was small enough to step on. He was close enough to kill.

“You have to use every weapon you have. It’s how you win.” She didn’t understand him then, didn’t understand what he meant by pressing a ring into her hands and telling her she’d be the enemy, but she did understand that it didn’t matter.)

There wasn’t anything wrong with hitting a person who was down; it was the only way to guarantee they _stayed_ down.

Warriors weren’t soft, weren’t weak—the mind drew the line between the killer and the killed, not the body. Eren was soft. Eren was weak. She had to pick between being human and warrior, and she made her choice.

(After all, anything in between would kill her.)


End file.
